Fuchsia Blood
by Queen Nightingale
Summary: The heat of his mouth feels something like redemption. JPLE One-Shot.


**FUCHSIA BLOOD**

**Author: **Queen Nightingale

**Pairing: **JPLE

**Rating: **M (For Content)

* * *

"You will always be fond of me. I represent to you  
all the sins you never had the courage to commit."  
- Oscar Wilde, _A Picture of Dorian Gray_

* * *

The sky is swathed in diamonds. It is the night after James beats Hufflepuff, and the rest of Hogwarts is drunk in Sirius' dormitory, but he is with you. He is with you. He is with you.

You stare up at the stars beyond the window frame in the abandoned hallway, glittering and beckoning, like sirens batting their fat lashes at you, and wonder how something so dead can be so magnificent.

"What are you looking at?"

You turn back, and James is staring at you intently, suddenly reaching over and pressing his hand to your cheek as if testing the temperature of a fevered child.

"The stars. What are you looking at?"

He smirks, his eyes darkening. For a second you are stunned silent by the perfect flow of his hair, the delicate chocolate crackle in his eyes, and the way his lips are so red they look bloodied.

"What am I looking at?"

"Yes." You whisper, not daring to move.

"The stars. I am looking at the stars in your eyes."

* * *

He is sixteen years old, and you are in love.

In class, you sneak peeks behind your textbook, glancing at his slouched down form, the way that his clothes hang off his perfect English-boy frame. Sometimes you catch him glancing back at you, and you whip your head forward again, red tulips flashing stop-light burgundy in the apples of your cheeks. Your pulse pounds so fast that you are forced to grit your teeth.

At night you sit in the Prefect meeting and tap your foot impatiently, staring at the back of his spine with the ferocity of a madman. When he doesn't turn around, you silently rage and refuse to crack a smile, even when snotty Alice Longbottom reads out "Potter and Evans" from the front of the room.

"Evans!"

You hear your name called out, but you are fussing over your bag and trying to look busy so of course you do not turn around.

"Evans," the voice is quieter now, closer, and you flip your long red hair over your shoulder and twist around, nearly colliding with a firm chest in front of you.

"We're partners now." His voice is deep, low.

"I heard." You fiddle with your book bag strap and stare intently at the ground.

He doesn't say anything, and you are forced to raise your head to glance at his face.

"Are you okay with this? Given our ... uh ... history with ... uh ..."

"Given our history with what?" You nearly spit out the words, hating yourself for being attracted to this mumbling idiot standing in front of you.

You want to press your teeth into his chin and watch him moan. Instead, you grab your wrist and twist it as you watch him struggle for words.

"With ... uh ... with your Slytherin friend. I'm sorry about that, Evans."

"Don't apologize for something that you don't care about, Potter, lesson number one of the day," you sneer back before you can stop yourself, watching his eyebrow defensively arch and his sleepy eyes widen from the insult.

"There's no need to be rude," he hisses back, the two of you in the corner at the meeting, the rest of the Prefects talking quietly around you and packing up, "We can at least be polite to each other for the rest of the year."

You snort, derisively, red hair floating down in front of your face. "Sure."

There is silence, and you are glaring at him, and he is glaring at you, and you could slice the tension between you with a finger, let alone a butter knife.

You look behind him, and the room is emptying out, so you shift your bag on your shoulder and roll your eyes.

"Are we done talking now?"

"No."

"What do you want to talk about?"

He glances behind him as the last prefect walks out the door, and then he turns towards you, his face serious, glasses sliding down his nose.

"You look at me a lot in class, Evans."

Your pulse jump-starts, and you can feel colour rising up through your white skin.

"Oh Merlin, Potter," you groan, melodramatically, and duck under his arm that was leaning against the wall, emerging on the other side of his body, "You really think too much of yourself."

He turns around, slowly, and for a second you regret not holding your tongue. There is a smile in his eyes that you want to squeeze out like a washcloth.

"You're bluffing."

"Not in the slightest," you retort, "You're the one with the complex, thinking that I'm staring at you."

"You are staring at me."

"I'm not staring at you, _Potter_."

"But you are."

You toss your hair back in exasperation and start walking out the door. You're about five paces down the hallway when you hear a deep voice rumble behind you.

"I know you're staring, Evans!"

You swivel around and glare at him, his smooth, thin frame cutting a silhouette against the entrance to the classroom.

"Potter, please realize that in order for you to think that I'm staring at you," you reply, casually, walking backwards from him, "You would have to stare at me."

A frown emerges on his face, and you smile coquettishly in response.

"Yeah, but you still stared first."

You feel like screaming, but instead you tighten your fists and flitter away. When you reach the turn of the hallway, you can't help yourself, so you quickly glance over your shoulder.

He's still standing in the arch of the doorway, watching you, and you whip your head back, swearing under your breath.

Your blood pounds fuchsia.

* * *

It is ten o'clock on Tuesday night, and you are walking in front of James, sashaying your hips a little bit more than you normally do. You imagine yourself on a catwalk in Milan, or Paris, or even in some exotic location in South Asia, and you hold your wand delicately out and prance from side to side, starting to close your eyes and

"Why are you walking like that."

You yank your hand back to your side. "I'm not walking like anything."

"Yes you were, you were swaying your hips."

"Maybe you should stop looking at my hips then, Potter."

"Maybe you should stop flaunting them, Evans."

You slow down a little bit to his speed, falling into step beside him in the dimly lit hallway. He is humming under his breath, and occasionally your arms press against each other when you swing in step. Neither of you move. Your veins are pumping ultraviolet.

There is a feeling in the air that makes your legs feel weak.

His voice startles you. "I think you like me, Evans. I think that is why you were walking that way."

You are frozen, but you are still moving, so you quietly stutter out a simple reply.

"I think you ... I think you like me, Potter. I think that is why you stare back."

Suddenly his hand is holding yours, and you are looking at your wrist in shock, neither of you missing a beat. You try to swallow but your lungs have gone dry. You are still silently walking down the hallway but his hand is on yours? His hand is on yours? His hand is on yours and there is something like adrenaline racing, stampeding up your fingers and you cannot shake, you cannot shake, you cannot shake.

You flutter your lashes for a brief second and try to not focus on the feeling of his warm fingers laced with yours, but then suddenly his hand is gone and your mouth drops and you look down and something is empty but then a hand is on your waist and you are against the wall and your hair is pulled back and his lips press onto your upper right temple.

The heat of his mouth feels something like redemption.

His fingers are trickling down your hips like a slow waterfall, and his other hand is tugging at your hair, and you open your eyes with a shudder and there are dark brown, warm planets embedded in his face.

"I am going to kiss you now, Lily." The sound is a whisper, not a melody, but you could have sworn it was a type of music you never before heard.

You watch him move in closer and his lips are nearly on yours, but both of you are pausing and there is the silence of heaven screaming out all around your two humming, electric bodies.

He is waiting for you, and you watch his eyes flicker over to yours, darting across your face, asking permission.

You feel your lips move, and you speak truth, scarlet flocking up through your bones and exploding across your face in patches of salvation.

"Kiss me."

He does, and then you lose words.

* * *

They say that when you fall in love, you feel whole, but when _you_ fall in love, sadness grafts itself to your bones and bruises your skin with pigments of ecstacy.

You run down the path to the groundkeeper's hut in the late hours of night, and there are flies buzzing around your head, and you turn back and he is slowly padding after you, a wide grin on his face that matches the imprint his face makes in his heart.

You forget what he looks like. It doesn't matter. You are staring at him and his face is blurred because you are entranced by the tune of his arched spine under your hands.

"You know what is so strange, Lily?" He catches up to where you're standing, and pulls you under his shoulder, you smiling quietly into his chest and pursing your lips, "It doesn't matter what you look like."

"Of course it doesn't." You murmur back, your tumbleweed hair mussed by his shirt.

"I never knew that, I never knew that before."

You look up, and there is something so beautiful, something so wrong, something so sad in the way that he is grinning, looking straight ahead in front of you, that you wrap your arms around his waist and feel tears in your eyes.

"Let's have a race!" You say, suddenly, pulling yourself away from this teenage boy, from this young love, from this emotion emerging in the bone marrow of your spine, "Let's have a race!"

Instead of responding, he places his arms on your shoulders and kisses your forehead, something a lot like freedom tearing its way to the ground through your shoes.

You can hear a tragedy murmuring in between the shadows of the trees, but you ignore the sound and raise your head.

"We should have a race," he agrees, his dark eyes meeting yours, "Whoever falls in love first, wins."


End file.
